Time At Hand To Fight For Rebates

Post-Christmas isn't just a time for returning gifts people don't want.

It's also a time to seek another sort of return — of money, in the form of rebates on gifts people keep.

But, reports CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan, getting those rebates is a challenge, and many consumer advocates claim companies purposely make it one.

David Bookbinder says he can sniff out rebates no matter where they are, and he's determined to get them.

Bookbinder, who heads an eastern Massachusetts company called Total PC Support, says, "I will basically follow through and follow through and follow through until, eventually, I get that money."

And it can be a lot of money, Cowan points out, which is why Bookbinder thinks it's worth jumping through all those hoops the rest of us sometimes ignore.

"In terms of money," he says, "you're probably talking about 11, 12, 13 hundred dollars worth per year."

Some of the rebates Bookbinder seeks are for himself, some are for his clients, but even with his elaborate system of scanning receipts and barcodes, about half the time, he says, the rebates offer more pain than gain: "I've screamed at them, I've yelled at them, I've given them every name in the book."

Industry watchers say up to 40 per cent of mail-in rebates never get redeemed. That translates to more than $2 billion in extra revenue for the companies that offer them.

Consumer advocates such as Edgar Dworsky of consumerworld.org say companies don't make it easy, on purpose.

"Scores of consumers never follow through," he notes, "and that's found money for manufacturers."Even if you succeed in navigating the maze of instructions, Cowan says, it's hard to know if you've done it right, and it can be nearly impossible to contact the company once you send everything off.

That was the No. 1 one complaint of customers at Staples Office Supply, so the company responded with a change.

"We send them an e-mail confirmation, letting them know their information has been received," explains Donna Rosenberg, Staples' senior vice president of merchandising.

The state of Connecticut went a step further, Cowan says: If a company advertises a discount price there then, by law, that's the price you pay at the register, not after mailing in a rebate form.

But companies fought back: They still offer rebates, they just don't make them available to anyone who lives in Connecticut.

"Now we're seeing rebates where it's good everywhere except Connecticut," Dworsky says, "so ultimately, you tried to help consumers in Connecticut but they don't get the benefit of the bargain."

With more companies plugging rebates, and more dollars at stake for consumers, complaints have soared, Cowan observes. Gripes filed with the Council of Better Business Bureaus have tripled since 2001.

Says Bookbinder, of Total PC Support, "It would be great if they just did away with the rebate system altogether and had their consumers get the bottom price at the register, but I don't think that's gonna happen, 'cause it's just too effective a tool for 'em."